Into Starspace
by andallthat
Summary: The Kaitou KID is a legendary starship known for evading every authority. Kuroba Kaito is its new captain. Space!AU. Written for Poirot Café's Prompt Exchange #1.


_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

"Shit."

Kaito rolled his chair from the space chart hanging on the far left wall back over to the control panel. That was the warning signal. First step, he needed to turn the damn thing off because the constant blaring was _annoying_ , and second -

 _[Bocchama, there are three police cruisers flanking your left rear. Four more are headed in this direction and coming in at about .5 lightyears per minute.]_

"Got it, thanks for the update, Jii-chan."

His fingers went away, tapping at the console. The first hologram popped up, a module of the sleek starship directly in his line of sight. Kaito kept his left hand typing away various lines of code into the system's command deck while his right moved towards the hologram, the majority of his attention on it.

The Kaitou KID was, for all intents and purposes, a very finicky piece of machinery. If you didn't treat her just right, the system would go from your best friend to your absolute enemy. That was the way his father designed her, after all. It was in part a security measure. If anyone got their hands on her that didn't know how to operate the system properly it would blow up right back in their faces. She would shut down, and likely leave them stranded in whatever galaxy the poor sod had decided to fly into.

Treat her properly, and you could do anything.

His father had often compared her likeness to his mother. Kaito had snorted at that, but one couldn't have him arrested because of inaccuracy. Intergalactic space crimes? That was a different story.

If the alarm system was still blaring after the first full minute, that meant there was something more to the situation than just a little run-in with the Galaxy Patrol. He needed to figure out what it was, and fast.

Because god _dammit_ those sirens always gave him a headache.

Pinching with his index finger and thumb he splayed them out and similarly zoomed into the hologram, surveying the exterior of the ship.

"Check for abnormalities."

 _[Where would you like?]_

"Get a full diagnosis for the entire ship," Kaito narrowed his eyes, zeroing in on blip near the left wing as he spun the picture around, "But start by the left wing. I think there's something there."

 _[Checking for abnormalities on the left wing and progressing outward.]_

If Kaito had been any normal captain, he would have directed a member of his crew to run through the diagnosis manually and spared a second one to go check out the area in person, but Kaito wasn't any normal captain.

Neither was his father.

Kuroba Toichi was a mechanical genius, who raised a similar genius of a son. He'd hand-crafted the ship from scratch to suit his every particular need and didn't stop there.

Unlike even the top-of-the-line starships on the market, the Kaitou KID was nearing the smaller size that you could have for a starship and have it still be considered a 'starship' as opposed to a 'cruiser'. Cruisers were one-to-two man pods that were known for their speed and high energy attacks. The main downfall to their construction was the reloading charge. Since they used up so much energy to be efficient and powerful, once that energy expenditure reached its peak the users were, in a sense, stranded until the system finished its reload. To compensate for the mass expenditure, reloading took a while.

Since her design was still technically a starship, KID didn't have this problem. She could go on for lightyears without a full drain of power because the system reloaded as it went. The energy bursts could be just as big as the cruiser's and the drain wouldn't take out even half of the full supply. That made her bigger, but harder to catch.

And better yet, she was completely one-man operational. With the touch of his fingertips alone, Kaito could fly her even better than any of the other starships in the galaxy with a trained crew. He didn't need to send anyone to run a diagnosis for him, with just a simple command the AI system that had been ingrained into the infrastructure of the ship could do it for him, with him needing to move a muscle.

The AI – or Jii Konosuke, as his father had named him – was the Kaitou KID's one and only partner in crime. He was the leading reason as to why the starship had managed to evade capture up to this day, aside from the efforts of its captain, of course. Kaito had absolutely no idea where he'd be without Jii-chan.

Probably in an intergalactic prison somewhere far in the reaches of space. Didn't that just sound homey.

 _[Scan complete. I've located a hyper-sensitive bug attached to the exterior underneath the left wing of the ship. No other abnormalities detected.]_

Kaito finished the line of code with his left hand and, with one last pause, entered a little 'surprise' at the end for his lovely pursuers. He pinched the hologram again and moved it off to the side, pulling up a star-map of his location and the next three surrounding lightyears.

"Thanks Jii-chan," he smirked and the pinched onto the new hologram and _flung_ it-

The hologram expanded in the new space it was given until it filled up the entire control room. Kaito stood, walking over to the center of the room with ease despite the magnetic soles on his boots.

In front of him was a palm-sized hologram of his ship, flanked by the aforementioned cruisers, and showing in detail the asteroids and nebulas in the surrounding area.

"Dim the lights. Play map in real-time."

The lights turned low and within a split second the images pictured in the hologram began moving, albeit slowly, in front of him. Kaito smirked and observed the locations of the cruisers closely. A symbol on the side of one of them had him raising an eyebrow.

So Nakamori-keibu was the leader of the chase this time, huh?

He laughed.

"Setting trajectory," he told Jii-chan, and then reached a hand out to tap the first cruiser. "A1." He tapped the second. "C7." And the third. "J2." And continued from there, designating various lines of his code to each cruiser along with the ones that were headed in his direction but still a distance away from the ship. Just to add a little confusion to the mix, he selected some of the asteroids as targets as well.

Pleased with his work, Kaito turned away from the hologram and back to the control panel, plopping back down onto his seat. Since Jii-chan was still loading the target information into the systems mainframe, he turned to his right to the side panel and entered a line of code into the hologram's source text.

MINIMIZE_DISPLAY ()

{. LIGHTS: NORMAL

.}

The map immediately faded from view in the room and the lights gradually increased until they ended up at their normal setting. Kaito pushed himself back over to the main panel and hit enter. Coding gradually began appearing on the screen, and he turned his attention back to the hologram of his ship.

 _[Trajectory set. Commands accepted. You have an incoming call.]_

Kaito blinked up, finger not even a centimeter away from where the bug on his ship was pictured in front of him.

"A call? From who?"

 _[The identification number is blocked, but the transmission is coming from one of the police cruisers.]_

A chuckle rose up in Kaito's throat. Of course it was. And he had little doubts about who that message was coming from. Admittedly he was surprised it had taken this long for him to call. They'd gotten this close without attacking so far, so they were probably planning something.

Unfortunately for them, Kaito's plan was coming into action first.

"Go ahead and let it through."

The let his finger draw nearer until it was directly above the blip on the hologram. He needed to get this as close on target as he could manage, and letting out a slow breath he pressed his finger against the bug in the hologram. Not two seconds later the area flashed red and he removed his finger. And just it time, it seemed like, because the alarm system – which had faded into nonsensical background noise at this point – finally shut off completely and the static cleared to signify the call coming through.

A voice powered over the speakers from the screen in front of him, and two men appeared on the screen.

"Intergalactic Criminal 1412, you are in forbidden airspace and under the arrest for over a hundred crimes against the galaxy. Come to a stop and prepare for boarding. You are -"

In that instance, the man who was speaking on the screen was abruptly crowded over by a much bulkier man that Kaito would have a hard time not recognizing.

"Kaitou _KID!_ We've got you now, you can't escape! Give up, there's nowhere to run!"

Kaito closed an eye and had to massage his left ear with his hand, glad that the video call was only one-way and they hadn't seen his wince. If the first minute of the alarm system going off hadn't damaged his hearing, leave it to Nakamori-keibu to finish the job.

"My, my, such a temper you have, keibu," he drawled in what was really his 'captain' voice, but the one he had taken to calling his 'KID' voice after he took up the mantle, "But really, what a silly thing to say. This is space! I have absolutely everywhere to run."

The taunting worked, because that was all he needed to send Nakamori-keibu on a rage-filled rant, starting out with, "Listen here you little -" and proceeding into a very creative variety of curses and insults about anything that came to mind. Kaito couldn't help but laugh.

" _Keibu_ , do you kiss your daughter with that mouth?"

"I would tell you but you're going to be in jail for the rest of your life after we're done with you, so you'll never find out! This time, no matter where you go, we're going to find you KID!"

Kaito raised an eyebrow, but he knew exactly what the inspector was referring to even as he was trying to be subtle about it. Subtlety never had been Nakamori's strong suit, and his tendency to boast his successes was one of the reasons why he'd failed to catch him so far.

And, well, Kaito's superior flying skills of course.

"I wouldn't be so certain about that, keibu-san," he chuckled, as the area he'd previously designated on the hologram started flashing.

When he'd selected that area, it had registered in the system the heat up the exterior paneling concentrated around that singular spot. That way he could short-circuit the mechanism of the bug, and in doing so meant that they no longer had a way to follow him to his base. But as a added security measure, it wasn't only going to short-circuit the bug, it was literally going to _fry_ it. That way it'd detach from the ship completely and be left floating in space useless. Kaito didn't take any chances.

"WHAT!" Nakamori-keibu shrieked from the other line, and Kaito took that as his indicator that they had just gotten a front-seat view to the bug detaching from his ship. Good.

Now it was time for the fun.

"Well, it was _lovely_ talking to you both. Especially you, Nakamori-keibu, always a pleasure. But you know, things to do, people to see, all of that. Bye-bye!"

One tap on the keyboard and the call disconnected.

"Nakamori-keibu's lively as ever," he laughed, then pushed himself up from his chair, allowing it to roll off to some unknown spot behind him. Turning on the magnetic paneling in the floorboards. Kaito immediately felt his shoes stick in place as an indicator that everything else in the room would stay still as well.

 _[Are you ready Bocchama?]_

"Of course, Jii-chan. I think I've let them stall long enough, don't you? Activate the command deck."

 _[Command deck activating.]_

A grin split across Kaito's face and his hand moved to the lever on his right. He gripped it and slowly pushed it forward, feeling the engines of the starship rev up. Only after it was at full throttle did Kaito allow himself to shout.

"It's showtime!"

The Kaitou KID blast forward and the chase began.

* * *

I am considering continuing this, if people are interested. Please let me know what you think and if you'd like to see more. :)


End file.
